Lord Ratner

Or, arguing with you is like playing chess with a pigeon. You just knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and strut around like you won the match. There are more interesting people to converse with here. Though you are occasionally amusing.

The one Zelensky fucked up? I'm one of the more pro-funding-Ukraine people here, but that was an absolute dumpster fire. What did he think his job at that meeting was? Just because your flag is raised to the same height doesn't make you peers with the US. He knew the starting positions of Trump and Vance, and he should have known Trump's disposition towards flatter, and he decided to press. I'm not saying he's factually wrong, but his job at that meeting wasn't to be the debate champion. I wish this was just Trump playing 4D chess to get the Europeans to take over funding Ukraine, but it's not. Trump's first impeachment made Zelensky the enemy, and he's looking for any reason to embarrass him. Zelensky failed the test. However the end result may still be that the Europeans finally take ownership of their sphere of influence.

If you don't know anything about the person, why waste our time quoting him? It's one thing to quite someone relevant, otherwise this is like your drunk father in law forwarding spam email chains. The whole point of a message board is to make articulate points. If you watched the video, articulate your point. Then you didn't have to deal with quoting racists or morons.

Good thing we took $12B in debt to buy the stock at much higher prices!

A much better source. And, by the way, I agree with them.

I think the more relevant point is if the only people you can find to support your position are racists, there aren't enough people supporting your position. Just find better supporters. It's the Internet. Sure, the line between eugenics and racism is fuzzy, but he was using a pseudonym, so let's not pretend this clown is like Charles Murray. He did also apologize, and young people say dumb shit. But, find a better spokesperson

The R model tanker engines are super low to the ground, and pod-scrapes are one of the highest risks of landing it. Happened a bunch, until they started giving a Q-3 to anyone who did it (at least according to the old farts). Suddenly, pod scrapes are very, very rare. Punishment works, as long as it's for something that should be punished. Crossing an active runway without clearance should at least get your license suspended. And if it's just because you were heads-down, sorry, that's not a good reason. The unions have taken a lot (almost all) of the punishment for bad behavior away at the company level. That's fine, the companies behave badly all the time. But the FAA has gotten lax too. Some things need harsh punishments to keep them rare.

Foreign Central Bank buying of treasuries is already falling a lot. Bank and Private ownership is now the main customer. Which is great, until they don't have any money to spend. The wheels are already in motion.

Uh, no.

Correct. They have "done the math," and it's cheaper to deal with a few huge meltdowns than to have the excess capacity to deal with large weather disruptions. You can give all the overtime pay in the world, it doesn't give you spare aircraft and it can't free up the jet bridges when you land too many aircraft at a hub. Unfortunately the management team that has done this math also runs the least profitable legacy airline...

Is it the better system or not? I wish we had a competitive market for things like this, but we don't. He is uniquely good at monopolizing markets that were neglected. EVs, space lift, orbital Internet, etc.

No dude. That's not the point. Also the Republican spending plans were known before the election. It was all over the news obviously. The point is that the Republican party has recognized what the Democrats knew and started years ago. Once the American people are hooked on free cheese, you ain't unhooking them. Not without some sort of external catastrophe resetting societal expectations. Donald Trump is the reason the Republicans have figured that out. I lament at the implications, but I don't deny the reality. If you want to go shout at a crowd of deranged mega hypocrites, you're at the wrong website. Like I said, everyone here who supported Donald Trump that I know of did so explicitly acknowledging the problem with deficit spending. I have gone into great detail of my personal beliefs. We are going to spend ourselves into Oblivion no matter what, so what I have to vote on is who is going to allocate this magic money towards the items that best position us to win world war 3, which I believe is inevitable. It doesn't help that we are also in the middle of a political shift, where the parties fall apart and realign under new identities. So all of your gnashing at wailing at Republicans is pointless, because the Republican party of George w bush has already been killed, and we don't know what the Republican party being born of Donald Trump will look like when it is fully formed. Just like progressivism assassinated the Democratic party, we have no idea what they will look like when they reorganize. For now, it looks like Republicans are going to steal labor away from Democrats. But I'm sure there will be more realignments involved.

Look dude, if there's someone here you can quote or remember supporting Republican spending increases, let's see it. Otherwise this obviously ignorant "if you voted for someone you must support every single thing they've ever done or ever will do" act of yours is just boring. With the exception of maybe one or two people, every single person who voted for Trump here has been quite honest about the trade-offs being made when voting for him. I bet the people in your life would benefit greatly if you unplugged yourself from political news for a bit.

I hope you're right. Obviously it would be great for this train to keep on rolling forever. There really isn't a way to staff for weather events. At least not under the current business model of the airlines. That doesn't matter if you're American, Delta, or United, if one of your major hubs gets hit by bad weather, the next couple days are going to be a catastrophe. One of the few things I think the airlines are unfairly maligned for.

This is the most unintentionally accurate portrayal of American Airlines forecasting ever posted 🤣😂

Excellent. From who? Obviously not a name or anything, but is it a recruit, interviewer, chief? I wanna find out why the recruiting guy is hearing otherwise. Edit: no one from the March classes has heard anything other than full-steam-ahead. I'll see if the indoc folks have heard anything. Also, we're still quite fat on pilots compared to the last 3 years, so it's odd they are hiring aggressively. I'd love to have another 2,000 pilots below me on the seniority list, but I'm not holding my breath.

Hey bud, I don't know if you were paying attention but they opened up classes for a grand total of 2 months, and now they're shutting them down again. When I posted that they were publicly announcing 2,000 hires for 2025. That plan has utterly collapsed. Our vacancy bids have had 1/3 of the captain slots that they've had historically for the last 3 years. Southwest is firing people, spirit is imploding, Delta is pulling back their hiring, and American has reduced hiring by over 50% only 2 months into the year. Ups and FedEx? Ouch. Also more new aircraft orders are being cancelled or deferred. What exactly do you think is happening here? Honestly, it doesn't really matter to me. I'm not changing airlines and my seniority is not going anywhere surprising. But anybody looking for an airline job would do well to accept any job at any airline that offers a spot. Holding out for the dream airline light end up with no job at all. And it's way better to be furloughed than unemployed when the hiring does finally resume.

You gonna fuck the commie right out of her, eh?

Why do you clowns insist on creating some false aggregate of positions to create the perfect conservative bogey man to debate instead of the people actually here in the discussion? You wanna balance the budget? Freeze all distribution programs at their nominal levels immediately. Let inflation solve the rest. Cut Medicare of for anything but stabilization and pain management after 80 years old. Fix Medicaid so that some retarded homeless junkie can't use emergency rooms for free while everyone with a job and insurance has to pay a fortune for after-hours care. Reform all benefits programs to *once again* require working age adults to work or starve. Strip the military acquisitions process of all special interests. No more buying pens from the blind just because. Remove all tax benefits for capital gains on publicly traded and private equity assets. It's income, you pay income tax on it. Stop securing home loans and student loans at the federal level and stop the rocket ship of rising home and education prices. Means-test VA disability benefits. For every $3 above $100,000 you make you lose $1 of your benefit. Obviously you aren't financially suffering from your disability. None of this is going to happen right now because everybody is hooked on the drug of free shit. What's going to happen is at some point we are going to get into a bloody messy war, a bunch of our kids are going to get fucking slaughtered by the Chinese or the Russians or the Europeans or the Africans or whoever the fuck we end up fighting, and all of a sudden people will get very serious again. You'll spend your savings on war bonds that you know are going to depreciate in value because what other choice do you have when it's directly funding the survival of your children in some God forsaken warzone? It will suck for a lot of people with pink hair and custom pronouns as the society exits the war with a newfound sense of homogeneity and community responsibility. Being your "authentic self" will be wiped away by the same judgemental fury of the surviving servicemen who will shun and shame those who believe the society owes them a payout or a tax shelter. Both the ultra rich and the ultra lazy will find themselves with fewer allies than ever. Until then, chill out, have a beer, and be happy that we don't die of paper cuts or colds. This has all happened before and it will all happen again.

*After*

Pilot recruiting contact.

If the OG had delegated that authority to the MSG deputy, then yes. Can we all stop pretending like Elon just started doing this with a Gmail account? The president of the United States, who everyone in the government reports to, decided to do this. Like every other corporate "force reduction," he has delegated that work to someone else. Doesn't the wing Commander have to sign all officer OPRs anyway? Do this many people really believe that the government owes someone a job?

Rumor mill is that American Airlines is halting new hire classes after March 4th. Edit: so far nothing confirms this rumor (2/25)

Might be time to take another break from BO.net. This is obviously a very emotional issue for you based on your wife's job and you aren't going to get anything but frustration hearing the rest of us bloviate about it. Best of luck to you and your wife.

Yeah Bud, considering the "means" don't involve rape and murder, asset forfeiture, internment camps, or racial segregation, these ends are justified by these means. Save the pearl clutching for a real violation of rights.